


Broad Side of a Barn

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Emotional Constipation, Homecoming, M/M, Personal Growth, Skinny Dipping, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 06:36:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20689109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: Growing up on a farm, there were a lot of things Jeonghan had to learn. He's finding out now that there's still so much he doesn't know.





	Broad Side of a Barn

Living in the countryside sucks. Everyone knows it, but nobody knows it better than Jeonghan. While he was growing up, watching his grandfather stooped in the fields alongside the cows, he was always sure that he would leave for the city as soon as he was old enough, and when the time to go to university rolled around, he did. It was a nice change of pace. Things in the city move quickly. Out on the farm, nothing moves at all. That’s what makes it so unbearable.

His younger sister left soon after—call it a telepathic connection—and he did feel bad to have left his grandfather all alone out there, but there was only so much he could do. Going back just wasn’t in the cards. Even after he graduated, even after he took a job in a city even larger and further away, he still never managed to return to visit more than a handful of times each year. With age, the air only got more oppressive, more weighed down with heat and the smell of grass. When he did go home, he was always suffocated by the feeling that he might get sucked into the fields, trapped in that stationary mass forever.

It was hard not to feel bad when his grandfather passed away a few years after his graduation. Even when Jeonghan went back for the funeral, he still couldn’t shake that feeling of all the air closing in around him, compressing him in boiling blue. And he couldn’t understand why his grandfather left the farm to him. He must have known that Jeonghan never liked it there much. Maybe it was just a case of not having very many options.

His younger sister was left most of the other assets: a collection of antique cars, some nearly-forgotten stocks and bonds, a few untouched acres in a different town on the other side of the country. She’d always been more careful with managing things, so Jeonghan left the maintenance of the farm up to her. Just thinking about the place was sometimes enough to make him feel like a kid again, wandering through high grass with two small hands full of chicken feed and feeling like he would never make it out. Now, as his sister babbles at him over the phone, that familiar sensation is creeping up on him again.

“What do you mean I have to go to the farm?” he says, elbow ramming into the back of his chair, then stands from his desk to pace a nice, angry circle around the room. He’d been having such a good evening so far. Leave it to family to ruin things.

“I mean you have to go,” she says, less than sympathetic. “There was a really bad storm recently, so you have to go out and organize the repairs.”

“Why can’t you go do it?” he huffs. “You do everything else.”

“Because according to all the local contractors, the legal owner has to be there,” she says. “Besides, I’m way too busy. A maid of honor has a lot of responsibilities.”

“Oh, whatever.” Jeonghan returns to his seat and slumps forward onto the desk. He elbow still throbs in a nice stingy way that isn’t quite subtle enough to ignore. “I’m busy too, you know.”

“What, with your one-bedroom bachelor pad and your zero pets?” For a few long seconds, Jeonghan considers hanging up. “Just grow up and go back. You’ll only be there for a few days.”

“You say that,” Jeonghan says, “but somehow it’s going to turn into weeks, maybe even a month.”

“If that happens, you’re just going to have to deal with it.” She couldn’t sound less like she gives a damn. Jeonghan’s sure it’s because she doesn’t.

“I hate you,” he says.

“You could never,” she tells him. There’s a muffled beeping sound, then she sighs into the mic. “Well, I’m hanging up. Have fun back home.” She’s already hung up before Jeonghan has the chance to mention there’s no way he could.

It’s been years since the idea of ever going back even crossed his mind. Living there as a child is all a blur now, swatches of green and brown and the feel of sunburned skin running together in his memory. He hardly looks back on it fondly. Sometimes when he lies down at night, he’s struck by the familiar scent of the fields in the summertime, and he can’t sleep. He can already feel the grass tickling his knees.

Some nerve she’s got, forcing him to go. A few days? He won’t even stay for one. At least, he’d like to tell himself that, but he knows things never end up the way he wants. With a hard breath out, he digs his suitcase out of the closet and starts filling it.

From the moment he steps out of the car, sweat already beads along his arms. He’d forgotten how hot it gets here during the summer, and as he drags his bag up the gravel drive, he recalls that the house never had any air conditioning in his youth. He hopes things are different since he was last here.

As for appearance, the place looks the same as ever. If Jeonghan were to close his eyes and conjure the details, they would all be exactly the same as he sees them now. Worn brown bricks, ashen shingles bleached pale in spots, chimney leaning crooked into the wind beside a half-rusted weathervane. The doorknob feels so natural in his hand, like it’s been waiting all this time for him to come home, and he feels something thick lodge itself in his throat. There’s no sound when he turns it.

His footsteps on the hardwood echo through the house, but somehow, it’s different than he expected. He thought it would feel a lot more like he was stirring life back into a ghost of a building, unsettling the dust and bringing back the color, but instead, it’s more like he’s broken into somebody else’s house while they’re away on an errand. He can’t put his finger on why until he walks into the kitchen and notices how neatly arranged the pots are atop the cabinets, how clean and well-used. Then he notices that there’s no dust anywhere, that the cushions on the seats are new.

A loud slam from the far side of the kitchen draws Jeonghan’s attention, and he looks over to see a guy coming in from the back of the house. He’s young, maybe a few years younger than Jeonghan is. He’s also tall and skinny and deeply tanned. A wide-brimmed straw hat rests atop his head, and he takes it off when he catches Jeonghan’s eyes, pushes back a head of smooth black hair that’s just a little too long. His smile is small, like he’s not sure if he should be smiling at all.

“Ah,” he says. “You’re here already.” There’s something very disarming about the softness of his tone. Jeonghan’s instincts tell him to be alarmed, but he can’t quite gather the energy to put his guard up.

“Who are you?”

“Oh,” the guy says, smile wavering somehow even smaller, and he replaces the hat on his head. “I’m Minghao.” He gestures one thin arm toward the large windows on the backdoor, fingers wiggling to indicate the green fields visible beyond it. “I tend to things.” Jeonghan guesses _things_ must refer to a lot more than it sounds like. He remembers well just how much there is to be done around here.

“I see.” He unclenches his fist from around the handle of his suitcase and stretches his fingers out. When he reaches his hand out to Minghao, he feels like he’s watching himself move in slow motion. “I’m—”

“Jeonghan,” Minghao says. The sound of his name on an unfamiliar voice is very strange. “I know. Thank you for coming.” His hand is blistering hot, and Jeonghan wonders if it’s just that he’s naturally cold or that Minghao is naturally warm. Maybe it’s just that it’s so hot outside today. Maybe it’s all three. He couldn’t possibly know.

“Of course,” Jeonghan says, because it feels wrong to bring up that he really would rather not have come. There’s a gentleness to Minghao’s air that he doesn’t want to stir too much.

“Make yourself at home,” he says, retracting his hand and shoving it into the deep pocket of his loose work jeans. After a second of silence, he laughs, something almost too tiny to call a laugh. “Well, I guess this is your home,” he says, voice soft. “I hope you’ll pardon my intrusion.”

Jeonghan wants to say something back, but he can’t think right. This damn heat. He wipes his sweaty palm on the front of his slacks and keeps staring at Minghao like it’ll get him somewhere. Only a few seconds pass before Minghao coughs and adjusts his hat, eyes flicking out the window. That little smile he was wearing has dwindled to nothing.

“Well,” he says, “I’ve got a few more things to take care of, so you can just… do what you want.” Not that you could control me anyhow, Jeonghan decides not to remind him. “I’ll be back around sundown.” Then he wanders back to the door and heads outside again, wading through the grass until he’s lost in the corn stalks.

Jeonghan shuffles down the hall toward his old room, bags dragging on the hardwood with an uncomfortable scraping sound. To his relief, this room at least looks just like he remembered, even down to the chips in the knobs on the dresser. There’s even a little dust still sticking around on top of everything, though not as much as he thought there would be. Minghao must clean the place well. He sits on the bed and whips out his phone, stares at the screen, sighs. One bar had better be enough.

“Hello?” His sister’s voice breaks up a little right off the bat.

“What the hell is the big idea?” he shouts into the receiver. “You didn’t tell me there would be a guy here.”

“Oh, come on,” she says through a veil of crackles. “Somebody’s got to take care of that place, and it wasn’t gonna be you, so of course I hired somebody. You should thank me. Minghao’s really nice.”

“If there’s somebody here,” Jeonghan says, “then why did I have to come back?”

“Because he doesn’t own anything.” The static is unreal. Jeonghan can barely hear a thing. “He just works there.”

“And lives here, apparently.”

“What, you wanted me to tell him to go find somewhere to stay when there’s a perfectly good house with nobody in it? Grow up.”

“I’m just saying I would’ve liked a heads up.”

“Well, I’m saying you’re old enough to handle not getting one.” He can hear the way her eyes roll. “Don’t do anything to him. He’s a good person.”

“Who says I’m doing anything?” Jeonghan asks. “When have I ever done anything to anyone?”

“You heard me. You need to—”

The line fizzles slowly, then pops in a burst of silence, and Jeonghan is left holding the phone against his ear, overheated from how hard it strained to carry the call through so far. He huffs and lies back on the mattress. As if he needs a lecture on manners from his little sister. He knows how to act. That doesn’t make it less jarring to walk into a house that was always yours and find someone else there, to find out that it seems to have become theirs. He wonders how long Minghao has been living here without his knowing.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a water stain on the ceiling. It had always been there when he was growing up, and he used to look at it every night before he went to bed to see if anything was different. He can’t tell whether it’s grown larger since he last laid eyes on it, and his chest feels heavy.

Shortly after sundown, Jeonghan wakes from a nap he had never intended on falling into. He reasons that the long drive and the heat got to him and grimaces as he peels his shirt from his sweat-slicked frame to change into something a little looser. The whole house seems to be covered in a honey-tone glaze, thick and pearlescent, smudging everything around the edges. The sound of his bare feet on the floor in the hallway is bizarre.

Minghao isn’t in the kitchen like Jeonghan thought he might be. Maybe it’s too soon after sundown and he’s not back yet, though looking out at the fields darkened near-black under the evening sky, he can’t imagine there’s much work to be done out there right now. He holds a glass under the faucet and fills it up, gulps it down a little too quickly. Perfectly lukewarm, just like always.

He slides into one of the chairs at the kitchen table and looks outside. The earth slopes ever so gently after the first few yards of grass in the back, dipping into a field of corn planted in neat rows, like line upon line of stationary soldiers waiting for the call to combat. Beyond that, he can almost make out the shape of the barn and the coop, shrunken by the distance and shrouded by the dark. The trek out there was always so long, he remembers, though now he guesses it might seem shorter. Even further than the barn, past the grasses and the far fence, the creek must still run by. When he closes his eyes, he can nearly make out the sound of the water.

His eyes pop back open when he hears a creak from the floorboards in the hall, and he glances over to see Minghao stepping into the kitchen, towel draped over his shoulders to catch the water dripping off his hair. A loose tank top hangs around his frame, and Jeonghan’s surprised to see that he doesn’t have any semblance of tan lines anywhere. All of his skin is the same coppery hue, and it’s now that Jeonghan sees how toned his arms are despite being so thin. Minghao looks over and smiles at him, still reserved. Jeonghan coughs, straightens himself, looks back out the window.

“Evening.”

There’s an interesting touch to his voice, a smoothness that makes his words melt into the air and warm it up just a little. Jeonghan turns back to watch him meander through the kitchen, taking out the occasional pan as he goes. When he notices Jeonghan watching him, he pauses and flattens his hands against the countertop, spreading his fingers out over the white laminate. His fingers are long and thin, and Jeonghan imagines that if he were closer, if he were standing beside Minghao and looking down, they would stand out against the counter like the silhouettes of trees.

“Is there anything you don’t eat?” he asks.

“Don’t eat?” Jeonghan stares for a while before he understands the question, and Minghao looks back at him all the while without shying away. “I mean, nothing in particular.”

“Do you have any preference, then?” Now he lifts his hands and starts moving again, opening cabinets and pulling things out like he’s been doing it for years. Maybe he has.

“Preference?”

“Like anything you’d like to eat,” Minghao says, mouth drawing wide in a funny sort of grin, one that says Jeonghan is missing something or maybe everything. “I’m about to start cooking, so now’s the time to say.”

Jeonghan blinks a few times. “You’re going to cook?” The haze of sleep must still be wearing off. Somehow, everything is too fast.

Minghao raises an eyebrow this time, stops rummaging through the cabinets to gaze at Jeonghan again. “We’ve gotta eat somehow,” he says, then sinks lower where he stands, leans his chin into one palm and stares back at an angle. “Unless you want to do it.”

“No,” Jeonghan says, readjusting his weight in the chair. “Anything is fine.” Minghao doesn’t laugh, but he smiles like he wants to, and Jeonghan feels like he’s wearing a lead scarf.

“I’ll get started then,” Minghao says, then turns his back to Jeonghan and opens the fridge.

Through the thin fabric of Minghao’s tank top, Jeonghan watches the muscles in his back move while he rummages through the refrigerator. The sound of plastic containers sliding over glass shelves accents the movement bizarrely, like Minghao is some being that’s only partially human, like there’s something in him desperate to break out and show itself to Jeonghan, struggling in vain against the skin. Jeonghan notices how intently he’s staring when Minghao turns around and catches his eye, and then he turns to look out the window again and watch the world outside sink into black.

He doesn’t risk looking back inside until he hears the sound of a plate being set down in front of him. When he does, he finds his eyes have been numbed by staring into the dark for so long. All the colors are too saturated, painfully bright and hard to look at. A column of steam rising off the food hits him in the face, and he squints through it to see Minghao slide into the opposite chair and pick up his fork.

“Eat up,” Minghao says, then lowers his fork to pick up a small bite.

Broccoli and corn and potatoes. It’s been a long time since Jeonghan ate so many vegetables and an even longer time since those vegetables were so fresh. The second the taste hits his tongue, he recognizes that these are home-grown. Something about the soil or the water here gives the crops such a distinct flavor, and as he eats, he falls backward in time. Another bite of corn, another forkful of potatoes, and he is seven years old, kicking his sister under the table, listening to his grandfather give another lecture on how to take care of the hens. A lump lodges in his throat, and he can’t quite swallow around it.

“Taste alright?” Minghao’s voice breaks him back into the present, and Jeonghan forces the food down.

“It’s good,” he says, having another bite, though he’s not sure whether he really believes it. Minghao’s eyes follow him like he can tell.

“I don’t usually eat much meat,” he confesses, swirling his fork in the air above his plate, “but I can go pick some up, if you want.”

“I could pick some up,” Jeonghan says. Minghao grins.

“I guess you could.”

There’s a thickness in the air that makes Jeonghan’s skin feel too heavy for his body, and it’s more than just the humidity here. He feels every fleck of dust in every corner of the house settling on his shoulders when Minghao looks at him, like he’s wearing the siding across his chest. Out of nowhere, he’s struck by the feeling he looks out of place here, though he knows nobody is looking. The table is the same one he always used to sit at, but it feels warped with the passage of time into something almost unrecognizable. He swallows another bite and looks away from Minghao, locks his eyes to the wood grain of the tabletop. When he was younger, he always thought it looked like a screaming man was trapped inside.

“So,” he coughs, “when are we going to see the damage?”

Minghao hums. “I suppose you can check it out whenever you like,” he says, “though it’s a little too dark out now.”

“You’re not going to show me?” There’s an irritating undertone of disappointment Jeonghan wishes he could go back and undo.

“Well, I’d love to,” Minghao says, “but I’ve got too much to take care of.” Jeonghan’s having trouble reading whether his tone is genuine. That’s another thing he hates about the countryside. Everyone talks with that oversaturated niceness, but only half of them ever mean it. “If you walk long enough, I’m sure you’ll find something. There’s plenty to see.”

The way he says it carries a flavor of heartbreak that Jeonghan isn’t used to hearing, and he clams into silence for the rest of the meal. Minghao’s voice is soft to the point of sounding vulnerable, but everything else about him gives Jeonghan the sense that he couldn’t be pushed around by anything. It’s uncomfortable, too, to see someone else in the house that was always his, far more at home than he ever felt here.

When Minghao finishes eating, he takes both plates to the sink and washes them without saying anything, then retreats down the hall. Jeonghan stares at the man trapped in the table and listens to his footsteps.

In his youth, Jeonghan was always a late sleeper. His sister always had to wake him to help with the chores before they went to school because the alarm was never enough to rouse him. Even though he has to wake up early for work now, he still barely manages to clamber out of bed in time to make it to the office every morning. He’s often wondered if it was something he would ever grow out of.

As he lies in bed the next morning, just shy of four o’clock, eyes fixed unblinking on the ceiling, he figures maybe he’s starting to get over it. No matter how much he tries to shut his eyes and fall back asleep, all he winds up with is a sore back and a brain swirling with so many thoughts that not one is coherent. It must be a side effect of being back in this bedroom when he’s grown too tall to fit the bed very well. After a while, his throat grows dry, so he heads to the kitchen for a glass of water.

The house is dark, run overfull with deep navy blue, but he sees a curtain of yellow light seeping in from around the bend of the kitchen wall that makes it seem like part of another world completely, floating through space. Minghao is sitting at the counter when he enters, slice of toast in hand and two fried eggs on a small plate in front of him. He glances at Jeonghan, briefly at first, then looks again and holds his gaze.

“Morning,” he says. His voice sounds a little rough around the edges. “I didn’t expect you to be up.”

“Neither did I,” Jeonghan says. He opens the cabinets one by one until he finds the glasses. Nothing is where he remembers it being. Minghao hums.

“Did I wake you?” he asks.

“No.” Jeonghan stares at the glass while he fills it under the faucet. If he looks into Minghao’s eyes right now, he feels like he’ll lose something important. “I just woke up.”

“Then do you want to come and help me out?”

It’s the instinct of shock that makes Jeonghan look even though he doesn’t want to. He finds Minghao’s face in an instant, soft and smiling under the harsh ceiling light. The murky blueness outside the window makes him feel trapped in here, like the two of them are stuck alone on a single raft in the middle of the ocean, and the vague twinkle in Minghao’s eyes doesn’t help it. Jeonghan stares at him wordless until Minghao exhales a dry chuckle.

“Just a joke,” he says, sawing off a bite of egg and popping it in his mouth. “Relax.”

Jeonghan’s shoulders tense up, then untense again. The more he looks at Minghao, the more he realizes his original assessment was all wrong. Aside from his features, nothing here is gentle at all.

“Hilarious.”

Minghao stands with a clatter and carries his plate to the sink. His elbow bumps against Jeonghan’s when he gets there, and Jeonghan backs up with a few quick steps, nearly spilling his water. “I’ll be out all day,” Minghao says, and his voice is back to that enchanting softness. Jeonghan is going to get whiplash. “If you need me for anything, just look for a while. I’ll be around.” Then he walks to the rear door of the house and shoves his feet into the mud-caked work boots resting by the doormat. The door clangs shut behind him, and suddenly Jeonghan is very tired again. Tired enough to fall back asleep.

When he wakes again, the sun has long risen, but the night-drenched silhouette of Minghao is still stuck on the insides of his eyelids. Body heavy from the heat, he drags his feet to the floor and walks down the hall. There’s nobody in the kitchen or the living room, just like Jeonghan knew there wouldn’t be. He guesses the house must spend most of the time empty like this. Quiet though his footsteps are, they echo off the walls.

Outside the window, the sky is too blue, way more blue than should be possible, and not a single cloud floats by to offer up a little shade. Just by looking, he can feel how much hotter it is out there than inside, and sweat starts to gather on the back of his neck at the thought alone. Minghao must be out there already, somewhere knee deep in the fields, and he must be sweating too. For a moment, Jeonghan pictures sun glinting off the sheen of his neck beneath that wide-brimmed hat, a few droplets sliding down and slipping beneath the collar of his shirt. Then he opens his suitcase to get dressed.

The air outside is stifling. Summers always were the worst, boiling in every way they could be, and as Jeonghan wades through the tall grass skirting the edge of the cornfield, he remembers how very rarely breezes ever blew by. Grass blades scratch at his legs below the ends of his shorts, and he regrets not wearing something longer even though he knows the heat would kill him if he did.

A while of walking goes by before he sees any of the damage Minghao was talking about, but once he spots it, he starts to notice everything everywhere. Lengths of fence collapsed and broken, patches of grass washed to mud. He spots a small shape among the fields as he nears the barn toward the rear of the land, notices as he approaches that it’s Minghao, wearing that big sun hat again and pushing a wheelbarrow of hay in front of him. Though the sun beats down, he continues forward like it’s nothing, shoulders squared and back straight as he marches on. Just looking at him makes Jeonghan feel a little weaker.

On the far side of the barn, he notices a number of missing slats coming into view while he rounds the bend, entire sections of the outer siding shorn off and shredded to rubble across the ground. It’s battered enough that he can see through the wall as he passes, make out shapes in the gaps between ceiling supports. He’s careful to take quiet footsteps creeping toward that destroyed wall, though he doesn’t know why he should be. Breaths barely manage to escape him. Must be the heat.

Inside, he sees Minghao standing in front of a cluster of three or four cows, a few less than they’d had in Jeonghan’s childhood. He shakes the last bit of hay into the shallow trough at his feet, then rests his hand atop the head of the cow nearest him and strokes behind its ear. He says something to it, almost inaudible, voice small like he’s talking to a child. Jeonghan never realized how sad cows’ eyes look before right now.

“Hey.” Minghao’s voice is jarringly loud in contrast to the way he was just using it, and Jeonghan almost falls to his back. Minghao is looking directly at him, lips quirked in a half-smile, and Jeonghan sighs. Of course he was spotted; he wasn’t exactly hiding. “You don’t have to stare. You can come in, if you want.”

“Come in?” He sounds more surprised than he means to. From the dimness of the barn, Minghao’s eyes twinkle at him.

“Yeah,” he says, grin widening. “They’re just cows.” He pats the head of the one he’s got his hand on, frighteningly gentle. “They won’t hurt you.”

“I mean… I guess I can come in.”

“You just looked like you wanted to, is all,” Minghao says. He nods his head at the destroyed section of wall Jeonghan stands behind. “You can come through from over there. Can’t hurt it more than it already has been.”

“Alright.” He hesitates from a moment, skin buzzing under the afternoon heat. Somehow, the barn seems like a trap even though he can see the exit. “I’m coming in, then.”

Just barely, it’s cooler inside, probably due to the shade of the roof, though there are patches where jagged holes let in sunlight. As he steps over the haphazard array of fencing, Jeonghan wonders how things could’ve been trashed so much by just one storm, how anything is even alive afterward if the extent was so great. He’s distracted from it when he reaches Minghao’s side and Minghao grabs him by the elbow to guide him a little closer. The glove he has on is coarse against Jeonghan’s arm.

“Aren’t they cute?” he says, voice oozing warmth. His other hand sweeps behind the cow’s ear as it blinks, long eyelashes fluttering away a dozing fly. “Her name is Sunflower.” There’s something lingering in his eyes Jeonghan can’t even begin to understand, the ringing notes of sunset spread thin all through them. “She just had a baby,” he says, and Sunflower moos in response, tiny calf nosing into her side.

“They’re very cute,” Jeonghan says. Minghao laughs, maybe because he can tell how little Jeonghan means it. “Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not.” Minghao’s grip tightens a little on Jeonghan’s elbow, then his hand flits up to give Jeonghan’s shoulder a quick squeeze before retreating to his pocket. “So,” he says, smooth, and Jeonghan feels like he might have a sunburn, “do you want to try milking her?”

Sunflower gazes up at Jeonghan from under her heavy lids, small black spots on her nose moving with every breath she takes. It must be hard to live like this, Jeonghan thinks, in this ramshackle barn and this suffocating heat, yet here she sits, placid and blinking, eyes catching the strips of light that come through the patchwork roof. Her nuzzling calf lets out a small cry, and Jeonghan’s throat feels thick.

“Sure.”

“Do you remember how?”

“Of course.”

Though Jeonghan says it, he realizes as he lowers himself to a squat and positions the pail Minghao brings him that it’s very much a lie. He holds his hand out in the air, not quite near enough to touch anything, and squints. After he was in elementary school, he never saw the cows much, and it’s not exactly like riding a bike. After a few silent moments of hesitation, he hears a soft breath of resignation and a vague rustling sound, and then Minghao is squatting beside him and tugging his gloves off. Jeonghan hasn’t quite had enough time to process it when he feels Minghao’s hand wrap around his own.

“Like this,” he says, guiding Jeonghan’s hand forward to wrap around the udder. He’s warm on both sides, disintegrating under the heat of Minghao’s palm. Minghao’s other hand creeps around to Jeonghan’s shoulder and holds him still, like he’s trying to keep Jeonghan from getting spooked and running off. Gently, he squeezes his hand around Jeonghan’s until a thin stream of milk rattles into the bucket. “Got it?” His voice hums against the shell of Jeonghan’s ear, and it feels so very bright red.

“Yeah,” Jeonghan says, “I got it. Thanks.”

Minghao’s laughter brushes against Jeonghan’s neck. “Sure you do.” He takes his hand off Jeonghan’s, but leaves the other clasping his shoulder, arm a belt of heat against Jeonghan’s sweat-soaked back. It’s been a long time since Jeonghan sweat this much, and he hates the feeling of it, but Minghao doesn’t seem to care. He hums a soft little tune right by Jeonghan’s ear until he decides that’s enough milking and places a hand on Jeonghan’s knuckles to stop him.

“We better let her rest now,” he says, rising to his full height. When Jeonghan stands up to join him, Minghao is patting Sunflower’s head again. Like he never gets tired of it. “Good girl,” he says. “Eat up.” Before he walks off, he stoops to rub the calf’s head. Then he turns and pushes the wheelbarrow back out through the entrance. A few beats too late, Jeonghan starts after him.

He’s out of breath when he catches back up to Minghao outside, and the intensity of the heat only makes it worse. The sound of cicadas singing from beyond the ruined fences is maddening. “Wait a second,” Jeonghan huffs. Minghao turns and throws a glance. The brim of his hat shades his face.

“I didn’t think you were coming with me.”

“Is that not allowed?”

A smile gleams from within the shadow covering his features. “It’s allowed,” he says, heavy with held laughter, “but I thought you would head back inside already.”

“Well…” Jeonghan can’t deny that he wants to. He hesitates a moment longer before Minghao chuckles out loud, rich with the feel of the earth beneath them.

“I think you should go back inside,” he says, plucking the hat off his head and placing it carefully atop Jeonghan’s, other hand still steady holding the wheelbarrow upright. His hand lingers by Jeonghan’s cheek a long moment. Then he retracts it to comb through his own hair. “Looks like you’ve gotten a little too much sun.”

“Have I?” Now that Minghao mentions it, Jeonghan can feel it burning in his cheeks. He refuses to let it be anything else. “I guess I could go back, then.”

“You’ve seen plenty, right?” Minghao asks. He fixes both hands to the wheelbarrow and tenses his shoulders, ready to start pushing again. “Maybe you could call a contractor to start figuring out how to fix it.”

“Maybe I could do that.” That is why Jeonghan’s here, after all. To fix things. He got a little swept up somehow in the green of the fields and the heady pressure in the air.

“Well, I’m not ordering you.” His voice fades a little into the wind as he walks off, lone wheel creaking in front of him. “You can do whatever you want. Take your time.”

Jeonghan watches him walk off, until the waves of grass have swallowed him up and there’s nothing left to look at but the blue dripping off the sky. Take his time. What a funny thought. Though he’s only been here a day, he feels already like he’s sunk years back in. While he walks back toward the house, he pulls up the local contractor’s number and dials, and he wonders how much time he can afford to take.

The contractor comes the next morning to make his assessment. Thankfully, there’s a thin spread of clouds to dampen the heat today, though Jeonghan still sweats buckets while they walk around the fields. His skin stings a little from the sunburn, and he realized as he presses a hand to his cheek that they haven’t seen Minghao even once since starting on their walk.

“Well,” says the contractor, a burly guy called Seungcheol, knocking a fist on his clipboard, “I will say, the damage is a lot more extensive than I thought.” They meander around the side of the house, feet crunching on the gravel driveway while they mosey toward Seungcheol’s truck. “Hard to believe just one storm did all this, though I guess it was a rough one.”

“How long will it take?” Jeonghan asks. Seungcheol glances down to his board a couple times and lifts the pen. He scribbles so quickly Jeonghan wonders if he even writes anything.

“We’ll get it done,” he says, “but it might be a few weeks, considering.”

“Weeks?” Jeonghan wonders why he doesn’t feel quite as shocked as he sounds. “Do I have to be here the whole time?”

“I think it would be helpful,” Seungcheol says. “It’s your property and all, so it’d be best if you could watch over the repairs.” He grins. “And company policy does say we need your final sign-off.”

“Alright,” Jeonghan breathes, holding a fingertip to his temple. “How soon can you start working?”

“Soon as you say.” He tucks the clipboard under his arm and digs in his pocket until the sound of his keys jingling rings between them. “Just give us another call once you’ve settled on everything, yeah?” Seungcheol jerks his head toward the house and the farm behind it. “I figure Minghao’ll have some idea where he thinks we ought to start.”

“Alright. Thanks, then.”

“Sure thing. Have a nice rest of your day.” Then Seungcheol climbs into his truck and brings the engine to life with a loud growl. A cloud of dirt blows up in front of Jeonghan when he drives back down to the road.

Instead of going inside like his body temperature is begging him to, Jeonghan circles back around to walk the fields again. The likelihood that the two of them were always just a few steps off from Minghao’s route is low, and his stomach feels a little funny about it. Maybe he’s collapsed somewhere in the heat. Of course he didn’t, Jeonghan tells himself right after he thinks it; he’s been doing this for too long not to know the limits of his own body. Yet Jeonghan still starts walking faster.

He swings by both barns and the chicken coop, through all the crop fields and the patches of grass grown high to feed the livestock, but he doesn’t spot Minghao’s silhouette on any horizon. Mosquitoes buzz close by his ears, loud until he reaches the grove of trees just shy of the rear fence. The babbling of the creek that runs behind the property is softened by distance, but the early afternoon light glinting off the water hits him hard in the eyes.

It’s a nice spot, with all these trees here. Sunlight filters through the dappled shade of the leaves, and it’s a few degrees cooler underneath, though the bugs still don’t let up. As he weaves through, stepping over the gnarled roots ridging the earth, he spots the large brim of a familiar hat resting near the ground, then a hand lying gently overtop, then the rest of a body—Minghao’s—leaned up against the trunk of one of the trees. His eyes are closed, lips slightly parted, and his head lolls to one side. Jeonghan drops to a squat beside him and notices the gentle rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathes.

“So you’re sleeping,” he says, and the words have barely left him when Minghao’s eyelids flutter open.

He stares at Jeonghan with the hazy sort of intensity only someone who’s just woken up can manage. Before he talks, he blinks several times, then glances around at the trees. A tiny smile hold his lips hostage. “Guess I dozed off,” he says, quiet.

“That’s not very responsible of you.”

Minghao sighs out a laugh. “Suppose not.” He stretches his arms out and leans forward off the tree, then sinks down again and pats the ground beside him. “Why not sit with me a little? It’s comfortable.”

“It doesn’t look comfortable.” Jeonghan sits anyway. He’s right that it isn’t comfortable, but there’s something comforting about the familiarity of it, like he’s a child being held in the palm of the tree. They sit in silence for a bit before he says, “I met with the contractor today.”

Minghao hums, and Jeonghan feels it through the tree, vibrating in his spine. “What did he say?”

“He said I should talk with you about where they need to start working.” Ahead of them, the sun sinks lower in the sky and sprinkles light everywhere across the little river. “Since you’d know best.”

“Well, I think…” After a few seconds, he heaves a breath. “I don’t really feel like thinking about it right now, actually. It’ll come to me later.”

For a few minutes, they sit there without doing anything, light breezes skating by every now and then not quite enough to keep them cool. Jeonghan wonders when Minghao is going to get up, wonders whether they’ll just sit here forever under this tree. The thought makes him feel like he’s already neck deep in the ground. Maybe Minghao has already fallen back asleep, Jeonghan thinks, but then he sees Minghao’s hand reach out toward a butterfly passing by a few yards off.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Minghao says, “though I can’t promise I can answer.”

“Did one storm really do all that?” He throws his arm out, gesturing to nothing, hopes Minghao sees what he’s talking about. A moment passes with no response. “It just seems like a lot, is all. It’s bugging me.”

“To tell you the truth,” Minghao says slowly, “no.”

Jeonghan waits for him to say more, but he doesn’t. “Then what happened?” he supplies. Beside him, Minghao shifts, pulls his knees a little tighter to his chest.

“A lot of storms,” he says, “over a lot of years. It’s been building, but the last one was real rough, and I figured it was time to do something about it, so I got in touch.” With his sister, Jeonghan guesses. “The animals… I could tell they were getting stressed.”

“You should’ve said something sooner,” Jeonghan says.

“I would’ve liked to,” Minghao tells him, “but I hadn’t heard much about you aside from that you hate to come back here, so I thought we’d try to get on.” A fly zips between them and settles on Minghao’s knee. “And I figured you’d be too busy to make the time.”

“I see.”

“Do you really not like it?” Minghao asks. “Even now.”

Jeonghan considers lying for a moment, but then he realizes he has no reason not to be honest. It’s not like the truth will hurt Minghao, or like he needs to be worried about Minghao getting hurt in the first place. “I don’t,” he says. He watches the water flow in tiny waves while he talks. “It just gives me this feeling like I’m trapped.” He feels something hard calcifying in his chest and coughs. “And it’s too hot.”

“Suppose so.” Minghao’s grin is audible. The pattern of light resting on their knees through the leaves shifts when the wind blows, a small simulation of backlit explosions. “If you don’t mind my asking, what is it that you do?”

“For work?” Minghao hums assent. “I’m a financial analyst. I tell the company where to put its money.”

“Do you love it?” Minghao’s voice is quiet on the breeze.

“Pardon?” When Jeonghan glances to his side, he finds Minghao already looking back at him, lips still curved in a little smile. A few cicadas in the trees around them start to sing.

“I asked if you love it,” Minghao says. “Your job.”

“I wouldn’t say that I love it,” Jeonghan says. “It’s alright.” He pulls at a loose thread in his jeans. “Well, I’m doing fine, anyway.”

“Is there something you do love?” Minghao’s hands smooth over the brim of the hat in his lap while he talks, a quiet brushing sound as his fingernails trace the weaving. “Something you want to do?”

“I mean…” Jeonghan sighs and shuts his eyes. “Not really. I’m doing fine for now, so I don’t mind it.”

“I see.” Minghao sounds like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t say anything. The two of them sit there for a while longer without speaking, watching the sun crawl a little lower in the sky until it starts to blind them. When the stillness starts to be too much, Jeonghan clears his throat.

“What about you?” he says.

“What about me?”

“Do you love what you do?” Jeonghan lifts an arm halfway, fingers stretching toward green forever. “All this.”

“Of course,” Minghao says without delay. “I don’t think I could get up every morning if I didn’t love it.” His elbow knocks into Jeonghan’s and stays there, burning hot. “Does that surprise you?”

“Yeah.” Jeonghan breathes in the taste of grass. “Maybe it shouldn’t.”

“I think a lot of people feel like the countryside never changes, and that’s why they don’t like it.” Minghao hardly sounds like he’s speaking to Jeonghan, but his words ring loud and clear. “But I think it changes so much every day that it feels like I’m always going somewhere.”

“Even right now,” Jeonghan asks, “when you’re sitting still?”

“Especially when I’m sitting still.” There’s a soft thud when Minghao slaps his hands to his thighs and rises to his feet. “But I suppose we better stop sitting still.” Jeonghan watches from below while Minghao puts his hat back on his head and stretches a hand down. It’s too bright up there; Jeonghan has to squint to look.

Minghao’s palm is boiling, and despite the thinness of his arms, he pulls Jeonghan straight up and holds his free hand against Jeonghan’s shoulder to steady him. Now that they’re both standing, their faces are close. The distance between their noses is only a few inches, and Jeonghan feels it tight in his lungs. For a second, he imagines Minghao might kiss him, press his back flush against the trunk of the tree, but he forces it out of his mind. It must be something about the way Minghao’s eyes twinkle, the way his smile slides so smooth and easy.

“Thanks,” Jeonghan breathes. Minghao keeps smiling at him, keeps holding him right there, like he’s waiting for something to come into focus. Before he releases Jeonghan’s shoulder, he brushes a thumb over the skin on the side of Jeonghan’s neck. Handprints burn into Jeonghan’s skin when he lets him go and walks away.

“My pleasure.”

It doesn’t surprise Jeonghan that he can’t sleep well here. Every few hours, he wakes up sweating and has to take a walk around the halls before he can get back to sleep. It’s too hot inside, even with the fan going, and it makes him feel all over again like he can’t get enough air in his lungs. Never mind the way Minghao shows up in the dark spots of his eyelids every time he shuts them. That is the very last thing Jeonghan needs to think about.

Though Jeonghan hasn’t been able to figure out what it is yet, there’s something about Minghao that feels a little out of place here, something that keeps him from sinking into the green of the fields with everything else. Maybe it’s that he seems so fluid, that Jeonghan can’t reconcile it with the stiffness he feels in the house and along the fences, or maybe it’s that his eyes shine more than he remembers anyone else’s ever doing. It may be that his voice is so soft and gentle in a way his grandfather’s never knew how to be, that it doesn’t add up with the callouses on his hands. Thinking about it gives Jeonghan a headache. Reminds his cheeks they’re a little burnt, too.

He’s on his third or fourth walk through the halls when he sees Minghao, the real thing, sitting in the kitchen much the same way he had been a few mornings ago. When he hears the floorboard creak under Jeonghan’s foot, he glances up, lips still poised at the rim of his coffee mug. They curl into a grin.

“Morning,” he says.

“Morning.” It is technically morning by now, Jeonghan guesses. He hasn’t exactly been keeping up with the time. Only after he’s seated himself at the stool adjacent to Minghao does he notice that he’s walked into the kitchen to join him.

“Can’t sleep?”

“What makes you think so?” Jeonghan asks. He smooths his nightshirt over his chest. “Maybe I’m just up early.”

“Just a feeling I get.” The sound of Minghao’s mug clinking on the counter echoes. “I know it gets a little stuffy in here sometimes.”

“Tell me about it.” Jeonghan pushes his hair out of his eyes and grimaces at the greasy feeling of it. “What do you do about it?”

“I usually sleep with the window open.”

“What about the bugs?”

Minghao laughs another one of those peculiar small giggles that make him seem unsure of himself. Deceptive. “The windows have screens,” he says, “so I don’t worry about it.”

“Must be nice for you.”

“Not a fan of bugs?”

“Of course not.”

“Guess I should’ve figured that,” Minghao says, sliding to his feet and resting his mug in the sink. “Not quite as many out in the city.”

“There are plenty for my tastes.”

A smile holds still on Minghao’s face while he runs the faucet, stays there once he’s shut it off and turned his gaze up to Jeonghan again. The dark blue light coming in through the window deepens the shadows on his face, and it’s a stark contrast to the glow in his eyes, the peachy tan on the apples of his cheeks, the smile. He looks at Jeonghan for a long while, again with that feeling like he’s trying his best to make something out. His eyes are so heavy. Jeonghan feels hot everywhere.

“You want to come with me?” Minghao asks.

“Come with you?”

“To work.” Minghao shrugs one shoulder toward the wall, outside. “Maybe if you tire yourself out, you’ll sleep better.” Half of Jeonghan thinks it must be a joke again, but Minghao reads nothing but genuine, and he feels a bit of a lump in his throat when he tries to laugh at it.

“I guess,” he says, “it might work.” He goes to stand from his stool, but Minghao holds up a hand to stop him.

“Let me make you something to eat first.” He turns around and rummages in the fridge, a tune of slinking sounds. “Can’t have you falling over on me.” His eye catches Jeonghan’s for just long enough to offer a wink, and then he turns back around and continues bustling. The tips of his ears, Jeonghan notices, are a shade of pink.

Their first order of business, according to Minghao, is heading to feed the chickens. He loans Jeonghan a sun hat, similar to his but a little darker and with a smaller brim, and even though the sun has yet to hint at rising, they don their caps and trudge through the fields to get to the chicken coop. Minghao carries a heavy bag of feed slung over his shoulder, and Jeonghan wonders how long it took for him to be able to lift it so easily. Even in the halfhearted coolness of the morning air, he breaks a sweat.

The coop is small and roughed up, but not nearly as much as the barn; it’s only missing a few slats of siding and a small chunk of the roof. Minghao leans the feed bag against the side of it, opens the top, and reaches in to pull out a handful of feed. He gives Jeonghan a look with eyes that he can barely begin to make out in the blue of the morning and nods his chin toward the sack, a signal for Jeonghan to grab some as well.

“Come out,” Minghao calls, clear over the dew lining the grass. He clucks his tongue a few times, scattering the seed over the grassless patch in front of the coop, then lowers himself to a squat and starts to sing.

It’s not a very good song—most of the words are “la” or “da”—and the melody isn’t very consistent, but there’s something nice about it that Jeonghan can’t quite pinpoint. While Jeonghan tosses birdseed to the ground and listens to Minghao go sharp in spots, a small cluster of chickens begin to make their way out through the coop’s ajar door, heads bobbing to the tune. When his hand is empty, he lowers to a squat as well and watches them eat. The jerky way they tilt their heads tires him out just to watch.

“Good morning,” Minghao croons, flicking the last specks of seed off his palm. His voice is tiny, but the chickens squawk back like he’s yelling. “Yeah, I know. Eat your food.”

“Do you always sing to them?” Jeonghan asks.

“They like it when I do.” Under the hat, he’s smiling. He dusts his hands off on his knees and stands, extending a hand to help Jeonghan up. “Come on,” he says, wiggling his fingers, “we’ve got more to take care of.”

Jeonghan reasons he could stand up just fine on his own without taking hold of Minghao’s offered hand. Tired though he is, his legs are feeling fine. The smell of the outdoors and sickly weight of the heat are starting to wake him up, anyway. He can stand on his own for sure, but when he thinks about it, when he thinks about Minghao’s hand hovering right there waiting, he feels lonely. It’s warm when he takes it, warmer when he lets go.

Their next task is gathering the eggs from inside the coop, then taking them inside, and by the time they’re walking out to water the rows of crops lining the property, the sun has just begun to peek over the rim of the horizon. With its rising comes a renewal of fatigue that only builds as the sun crosses the sky. He nearly drops the broom while sweeping the barn, and Minghao is there in a second, hand on his shoulder.

“I think we better head in,” he says, “and have some dinner.”

“But the barn…”

“It’s fine.” Now that he says so, it does seem true. There’s not as much stray hay left on the ground as Jeonghan thought. “We need to take a break.”

While Minghao cooks, Jeonghan sits largely motionless in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, watching with his eyes half closed and his fingertip tracing idle circles on the tabletop. Even now, the angles of Minghao’s back are strong, bony shoulders set in an angle that says he’s used to carrying. Absently, Jeonghan wonders whether Minghao would have carried him if he’d fallen asleep on his feet in the barn, wonders whether he would have felt the strength in his arms. He’s too tired to tell himself to stop thinking about it.

“Here.” Minghao sets a plate in front of Jeonghan, and he’s hit by the overwhelming scent of stewed tomato. He sits down across the table and watches Jeonghan stare at the column of steam rising off the food a while before saying, “You look tired.”

“I am tired,” Jeonghan says. He barely manages to grip the spoon. “What is this?”

“A stew my mother always made,” Minghao says, helping himself to a steaming spoonful. “Good after a long day’s work.” He jerks his chin a little. “I know you’re tired, but you have to eat.”

“It smells good,” Jeonghan says, stirring the top with his spoon. Minghao’s smile twinkles.

“Thanks.” He keeps his eyes on Jeonghan until he takes a bite.

Just as the smell would have him believe, the taste is largely of tomato, though there’s something warmer underlying it, something that makes his chest ache. The flavor is something like the feeling of coming home after a long day and climbing into bed, or a warm shower when you’re sick. Jeonghan’s eyelids grow heavier with each bite, until he can hardly see straight. In front of him, Minghao’s outline is blurring ever more into the wallpaper.

“It’s tasty,” Jeonghan says.

“I did my best.”

“Do you think it’ll really work?”

“What?”

“Getting me all tired out.” The spoon makes a terrible noise scraping along the side of the bowl, but Jeonghan doesn’t have the energy to lift it higher. “So I can sleep.”

“Maybe.” Minghao grins. “Be nice if it does.”

“So you don’t even think it will.” Jeonghan sighs and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. The pressure is soothing, like the sensation of being covered by a heavy blanket. After massaging them for a moment, he blinks again, and Minghao is still there, grinning something wide, blurrier than ever.

“Maybe it will,” he says, finger toying at the apple of his cheek. “I think I just wanted a little company.”

Jeonghan scoffs. “Because mine is so great.”

“Great as any.” It’s hard to brush it off when Minghao sounds so sincere. There’s something swirling in the deepest parts of his eyes, like the turn of the earth; no matter how hard Jeonghan tries to look away, he can’t help but see it. “As long as you’re here, whenever you want to,” he says, “I wouldn’t mind at all if you wanted to keep me a little company again.”

“Okay.” Jeonghan chokes halfway. He’s speaking before his tongue is ready for it, before his brain has found the time to plan it out. “Maybe.”

Minghao stands and grabs both their bowls to take them to the sink, and Jeonghan sits and listens to the sound of the water running without moving, fingers laced on the tabletop. He needs to shower before he goes to bed, he knows, but the thought of standing again is exhausting. The muscles in his legs burn in anticipation, and when he stands up, he thinks they might give out. It’s silent for a while before Jeonghan realizes the sound of running water is what he’s missing. Minghao’s hand is warm on his shoulder.

“Take care,” he says, and his feet are already laced up again in work boots, hat held loose under his fingertips. Jeonghan wonders how he moves so fast. “Do your best,” Minghao says, and his hand wanders up to graze Jeonghan’s neck, cup the side of his cheek, “to get some sleep.” For just a moment longer, his touch lingers there, and then he is gone again, marching out into the fields, toward the setting sun.

Somehow, it’s a little too cool in the kitchen. It takes a long time for Jeonghan to tear his eyes from the window and get himself to walk.

The contractors come for the next few days and start up repairs on the fences first, since that’s where Minghao decides they should begin. Since Jeonghan has to keep an eye over the workers for liability purposes, he doesn’t see much of Minghao, but he does start to sleep a little better. Every evening, he’ll catch Minghao when he comes back in to make dinner, but not for long. Minghao says a few things and smiles at him in that way he does, then disappears again. The house feels too empty.

On the sixth day, work wraps up on the final sections of fence around the farm. “You should go check with him,” Seungcheol says, and Jeonghan has a guess at who ‘him’ is, “to make sure it’s all up to standard, since he is the one who’ll have to deal with it.”

“Will do.”

“And next I figure we’ll start on the barn.” Seungcheol sways lazily from side to side while he speaks, like he’s waiting for the wind to catch hold of him and run. “Shouldn’t have to keep you here too much longer.”

“That’s great to hear,” Jeonghan says, but he hears the hollowness in his own voice. He’s been here a little over a week already, but he feels somehow like it’s been a year or more than that, like he never left in the first place. After he watches Seungcheol march off and climb into his truck, he sets off on his own walk in search of Minghao, and he realizes as he does that he can’t picture the walls in his apartment or remember the way it smells. Everything in his head is grass and soil.

There are a lot of clouds in the sky, the puffy kind that leave hard outlines of shadow on the ground, but everything is still consumed by a drowning sort of heat despite the intermittent patches of shade. After that day helping with the farm work, he’s come to be a big fan of the hat Minghao loaned him, and he’s wearing it again now, keeping the back of his neck cool in spite of the sweat. It’s still uncomfortable, but he’s learning to carry it a little better.

He doesn’t find Minghao anywhere he expects him to be, but he’s not surprised. More and more each day, Minghao seems like water, slipping through cracks Jeonghan never noticed and dripping into his line of sight without a word. When he’s finished checking all the buildings, Jeonghan heads back to the little grove where he caught Minghao napping before. Early evening heat beats down even under the cover of the leaves, and Minghao isn’t there. Jeonghan leans up against a tree, dabs at the sweat on his forehead, looks out toward the creek and squints.

Something is moving in the water, large enough to see even from here, and Jeonghan has a hunch telling him he better get a closer look. He heaves his weight off the trunk and starts toward the water, marching through thinning grasses until he reaches the rock-littered waterside. A small pile of haphazardly folded clothes rests on an empty stretch of ground beside a large and familiar hat, brim weighted down by a large stone. Jeonghan blinks at it, then looks up to see that the silhouette he spotted from the trees has come fully into view.

“Afternoon.”

Minghao stands proud, water standing just barely above his hips, one hand pushing back his damp hair. Jeonghan could tell already that his body was lined with that lean sort of muscle, but now, light glinting off water droplets in blinding starbursts, he can see how toned Minghao actually is, frame lithe but firm as he stands there, unbending in the current. Jeonghan’s throat is unbearably dry.

“Afternoon,” he parrots.

“Need me for something?”

Minghao smiles, and it’s now that Jeonghan notices how wildly that smile has changed from the first time he saw it. That little twinge of uncertainty at the corners of his lips is long gone, and as Jeonghan takes in the broad grin shining at him, he realizes that it’s been a long time since he’s seen it. Minghao’s eyes shine, full of sunlight, and he shifts his weight a little closer to the bank. The water skims just a little lower, low enough that Jeonghan is sure he hasn’t got anything on. Everything in his head is overheating.

“The fences are done,” he says. “I wanted you to check and see if they’re okay.”

“Alright.” Minghao drops his hands and runs them through the water. A little bit splashes in Jeonghan’s direction. “I’ll see about it later.”

Jeonghan nods and keeps standing there, tongue on the tip of saying something else. That was all he came to say, but it doesn’t feel like he’s gotten everything out yet. He sticks his hands in his pockets and clenches them into fists, lowers his eyebrows. No matter how hard he tries, his jaw won’t move. Minghao wades a little closer.

“You look hot,” he says.

Jeonghan coughs. “Sorry?”

“I said you look hot.” Hints of red dance around him when he stretches his arm out. “Want to join me?”

“Uh, I think that… maybe I should…” Jeonghan’s tongue is a desert. He opens his mouth over and over trying to get it to work right. “Go inside.”

“Is that so?” Minghao’s words are like oil, running slick over Jeonghan’s ears. “What’s the matter?” His eyes glint something playful that Jeonghan can’t help but read as dangerous. “Afraid of a little water, city boy?”

Heat rises to Jeonghan’s cheeks, and he bristles just enough to make Minghao’s eyes crinkle.

“You think taunting me is gonna work?”

“I think it might.”

“Why’s that?”

“Dunno.” Minghao swishes the water around him, numbingly slow. Mirth still hangs tight to every inch of his face. There’s something mischievous in his gaze. “I just think you could use a little teasing every now and then.” He flicks a handful of water, and it splashes in front of Jeonghan’s shoes. “Come on.” Now every syllable is honey, boiling hot, and each second bakes Jeonghan closer to death. “You don’t have to act cool for me.”

Jeonghan squares his shoulders. “Who says I’m acting?” Minghao’s grin in return is almost an answer.

“If you’re so cool,” he says, “then come in with me.” He fans his fingers out over the creek’s rioting surface. “Water’s fine.”

Jeonghan knows that he is twenty years too old to let himself be baited by elementary-level jeers, but he slips his shoes off, then his hat, then his shirt, then everything. He balls it up next to where Minghao’s clothes are lain and steps gingerly toward the water, trying not to think too hard about the breeze hitting him between the legs. It’s lucky, he thinks, that the sun has begun to set. It lights Minghao up from the back, so all Jeonghan can see is his silhouette. Very lucky. He is afraid beyond death of what expression he might see on Minghao’s face.

The water is colder than he expected, only barely cool enough to feel refreshing. A shiver runs over him anyway as he slides further into it, until he’s up to his waist, mud slippery under his toes. He’s near enough now to see Minghao’s face despite the backlighting, and it’s not the grin he was expecting. His lips hardly curve at all, barely parted, and he eyes Jeonghan with a steady weight. Always that same look, like he’s trying to catch hold of something, just waiting on it to fly by. Jeonghan has trouble talking when he’s being looked at like that. He gulps a hoarse breath and crosses his arms.

“Satisfied?”

“Don’t be so cranky.” Minghao wanders closer, and Jeonghan is acutely aware of his own heart rate. “It feels good, doesn’t it?” He pushes a little water Jeonghan’s direction and sinks lower, until his shoulders just peek out above the water. “Relax.”

“I’m relaxed.”

“You don’t look relaxed,” Minghao says. “You haven’t looked relaxed since I met you.”

A bird whizzing by in the distance catches Jeonghan’s eye. He watches it fly off, until it’s nothing but a speck of dust over the horizon, until it gets absorbed in the rising orange of the sky. “Maybe I haven’t,” he says. Something touches his arm, and he looks over to see Minghao’s hand there. Jeonghan hadn’t realized he wasn’t so far away anymore. His body is on fire.

“So relax, then,” Minghao says. “Take a deep breath. Enjoy the water.”

Jeonghan sinks down to be level with Minghao, then sinks a little further. Water runs up to the tip of his chin. He sighs and watches the way it ripples under his breath. “I can’t afford to relax,” he says. “I have too much going on.”

“I know.” The calmness of his voice is abrasive.

Jeonghan blows out another breath. The water in front of him breaks in choppy little waves. “Sorry,” he says, “but I don’t think you get it.”

“Figure I might not,” Minghao says, soft, “but I don’t think I need to.” There’s a sudden pressure on Jeonghan’s shoulders. Two hands, burning hot.

“I’ve already missed a week of work.” Jeonghan’s voice sounds like a whisper, barely more than, blending into the rush of the creek. “And I’ll miss more, and I don’t even know how much.”

Minghao’s hands squeeze. “It’s just work,” he says. “It’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know it.” His fingertips are feathery by the base of Jeonghan’s neck. “Work is only work. There’s more to life.”

“I know, but—”

“If you know,” and Minghao’s hands lift up suddenly, “then stop thinking about it.”

Jeonghan turns and finds Minghao there, nose nearly touching his own. His first instinct is to shy back, but his body freezes up before he can, and Minghao doesn’t move at all. The look in his eyes is light and heavy in the same stroke. “Fine,” Jeonghan breathes.

“How’s the water feel?”

Jeonghan thinks for a second. “Good.”

Ever so slightly, Minghao angles his head forward. Jeonghan braces for impact, but it doesn’t come. Only an inch away, Minghao hovers there, still looking Jeonghan dead in the eyes. It’s with great delay that Jeonghan notices Minghao’s hand is singeing a print onto his neck. “Enjoy it,” Minghao says. Jeonghan doesn’t know whether he imagines Minghao leaning in to brush their lips together or whether it actually happens, but he’s left standing perfectly still while Minghao floats off and backstrokes away from him, stirring up small orange ripples under the wine-dark sky.

Within the next three days, repairs on the barn are in full swing, and Jeonghan is happy enough to oversee them, though he still doesn’t care much for the sticky heat that swallows him up every time he steps foot outside. It’s nice, at least, because he’s right back to not seeing Minghao, and he absolutely doesn’t need to be seeing him right now. If he does, his head will start going to terrible places, like the creek and Minghao’s toned chest, like Minghao’s lips right there, so close, maybe too close. Jeonghan coughs and puts his hands on his hips. No good at all.

As he stands watching the undeniably boring work of the crewmen cutting away plank boards only to replace them, his mind starts drifting anyway, and he’s not quick enough to catch it before it barrels down those risky slopes. Every time he thinks about Minghao’s eyes, he gets a cold feeling all over, like he’s being seen in too-fine detail. At home, at work, nobody stares at anybody like that. It’s cursory glances and half-looks, just enough to recognize the most notable key features. Minghao’s gaze is like a magnifying glass, focusing sunspots on every inch of Jeonghan’s skin. It makes him feel like he needs to run.

Something bumps into Jeonghan’s thigh, and he turns to see Minghao pushing that wheelbarrow he always seems to have, deliberately nosing into Jeonghan’s leg. He grins something over-sweet beneath the brim of his hat, and Jeonghan whips back around to watch the workers split up wooden boards again. Already, his head is going too fast.

“How’s it going?” Minghao asks, undeterred.

“It’s fine.”

“Done soon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Something bugging you?”

Jeonghan turns back to face Minghao and finds that he’s eased up further, until they’re shoulder to shoulder, and is still looking at him hard, smile dwindled almost to nothing. The back of Jeonghan’s throat is on fire. God, does he wish there were some water around, but then water makes him think about the creek, and he just wishes he were somewhere else.

“No,” he lies. Minghao raises his eyebrows like he doesn’t believe it, and he shouldn’t, but it makes Jeonghan feel a little dizzy to think that he can tell so easily.

“My ears are for listening,” Minghao says, as if that means anything at all. His hand touches the back of Jeonghan’s neck only briefly, then flits away. “I’m sure the cows would love to see you,” he says, “if you need to take your mind off it.”

Going to see the cows means going along with Minghao, and Jeonghan’s first instinct is of course to say no, but it sticks on his tongue when he thinks of Sunflower’s sad eyes and her little calf, how they’ve been temporarily relocated to that tiny little shed all the way on the edge of the property. Seungcheol is already grinning and waving him away when he turns to look for him, and then Jeonghan is following Minghao out of the barn and into the beat-down heat of the day.

They don’t talk while they walk, which is both a relief and a nightmare. Jeonghan is stuck listening to the rustling sound of grass and the squeaking of the lone wheel on Minghao’s barrow, drowned too by the far-off screaming of cicadas in the trees. In all the noise, he struggles to find just one to focus on, ends up watching his own feet muddling along through the grass. It’s a real shame the animals have been moved so far away. He watches a drop of sweat slide down to Minghao’s wrist and gulps.

There’s a thick smell in the temporary holding shed that Jeonghan can’t quite place. It’s definitely not good, but not quite bad either, and it overwhelms him when he steps inside, like he’s diving nose first into a blanket of hay. Minghao whistles, and a few of the cows turn their heads to look. Jeonghan spots Sunflower by the distinct dark spot she has on her nose.

“Look who I brought,” Minghao says to them, unloading his cartful of hay in the makeshift trough at their noses. The calf twists into its mother’s side when Minghao stoops down to pat its head. “That’s right.” It makes the tiniest noise, like a baby bird’s first chirp. “I know you wanted to see him.”

“Why would they?” Jeonghan asks, but he treads a little closer, and Sunflower turns her head to watch him come. She closes her eyes when he pets her head.

“Because they love you,” Minghao says. He glances up at Jeonghan from where he squats, lips curving only barely. Jeonghan is surprised he can even spot it. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s true.”

“They don’t,” Jeonghan says. He looks at Sunflower, and she looks right back at him, unblinking, almost a challenge. Every corner of this tiny room reflects in her eyes. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“But it does,” Minghao says. He tickles behind the calf’s ear, and it moos at him. “They love a lot easier than you think. Every bit you give them, they’ll give right back.” He tilts his chin up, and suddenly the corner of the window letting the light through is in his eyes, shining right back at Jeonghan. “The whole farm is like that.”

Between them, the air is alive with a humming stillness, the thrum of a tightrope pulled taut, waiting to be walked across. Jeonghan feels it anchored in his skull, urging him forward, but every muscle in his body is frozen. There is a magnetism to Minghao’s gaze, a longing along the shadows on his cheeks that says he wishes Jeonghan would move forward, if only a little, just enough to move the air. Jeonghan takes a deep breath in and savors the wooden taste.

“I haven’t given them anything,” he says. Minghao’s eyes crinkle.

“You have.” With one last pat to the baby, he stands to his full height again, grips the straps of his overalls. “You’ve put a lot more love into this place than you realize.”

Jeonghan opens his mouth, but Minghao has stepped forward before he can get a word out, before he can even plan which ones he wants to use. It could be anything on his lips—an early-falling autumn leaf, a butterfly stopping for a rest. Whatever it is, it is so sickeningly warm. Jeonghan feels like fainting, but Minghao holds him upright, a hand on the part of his waist that feels the most like death.

“Do you like wine?” he asks.

“Wine?” Minghao nods. “I mean…” His brain goes into overdrive building one short word. “Yeah.” Every inch of his body is melting. He wonders if this is what it feels like to be buried alive. Minghao only smiles.

“Good,” he says. “I’ve got something I want to show you.”

The sun has just begun its dip below the skyline when Minghao takes Jeonghan on a walk to the cellar. He insists on going before they’ve eaten, says the food in the fridge will be there when they get back to it, and leads Jeonghan down a dirt trail he never noticed before that runs from the side of the house to the nearby tool shed. Minghao squats in front of a large pair of doors in the sloping ground behind the shed and flings them open with a creak. Dust floats around the stairs inside, cast in dark, and Minghao turns on a flashlight and begins his descent down them.

It’s cool inside, several degrees cooler than aboveground, and Jeonghan finds himself shivering every now and then while Minghao shows him through the cellar. It’s small but jam-packed, and it takes a while to weave through all the barrels and bottles arranged loosely on the too-close shelves and reach the back. Minghao sifts carefully through bottles until he’s found the one he’s after, coated thick with dust, then places it in Jeonghan’s hands and turns him around by the shoulders.

“Okay,” he says. “Head back out.”

Jeonghan squints ahead into the darkness. The light from Minghao’s flashlight is getting blocked by too many things for him to see clearly. “I don’t remember the way.” Then there is pressure and warmth. A hand at his waist, another on the small of his back.

“Go,” Minghao says softly. “I’ll guide you.”

Back in the house, Jeonghan eyes the bottle while Minghao cooks. It’s unlabeled, and the cork in the top is crooked, not sealed with much other than hopes and dreams. He wipes the dust away in patches with his thumb, clearing up small shapes until the whole bottle is clean. Even now, it remains cool to the touch, clings to the feeling of having been buried deep in the earth. Like fossilized amber, it’s perfectly smooth.

“You can open it,” Minghao says over his shoulder, steam from the vegetables he’s cooking shrouding his shoulders. “If you want.” He points to a drawer and turns back to the stove. “There should be a corkscrew in there somewhere.”

“Okay.”

It takes Jeonghan a longer than it should to make his way to the drawer and sift through it, to grab the glasses. He feels like he’s wading through knee-deep honey, and the steam floating through the air doesn’t help. Standing next to Minghao feels so strange, and his head won’t stop running itself dizzy in circles. By the time he sits back down at the table and twists the corkscrew into the cork, Minghao is carrying two plates toward him. How could it have taken so long? Minghao only smiles.

“Let’s eat outside,” he says.

“Why?”

“The weather’s nice.” An overstatement if Jeonghan has ever heard one. “And the sun is still setting.” He waits for Jeonghan to stand, smile unfaltering. “Come on. A little outdoors’ll do you good.”

“I’ve already had enough,” Jeonghan groans, but he is already standing and walking along behind Minghao as he leads them out to the porch.

When he was about nine, his grandfather put this swing bench in on the porch so he and his sister wouldn’t run around so much in the evenings, though he can only recall a handful of times sitting in it. Looking at it now, it’s clear that it’s been fixed up a time or two; the wood on the armrests is different from the seat, and the chains securing it in place look too new in spots to be the same. Jeonghan watches Minghao set the food down on the small side table in front of them and holds the wine bottle tight. Orange light glints off everything.

“Did you fix this?” he asks. It rocks back when Minghao reclines beside him, just a few inches too close. The light shatters into sparkles off Minghao’s smile as he reaches to take a glass from Jeonghan’s grip.

“I did,” he says. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“Why would I mind?” Jeonghan asks, coughing.

“Just might,” Minghao says with a shrug. “Figure it might feel like a stranger’s come in and changed everything about the place that’s yours.” His eyes slide to find Jeonghan and crinkle. “It’s your house, after all.”

“I guess you’re right,” Jeonghan says.

“Don’t you feel that way?”

He pauses a long time, staring at the field and the way it catches the fleeing sunlight. At the edge of his vision, the sun is barely anything, an egg yolk balanced on the edge of the earth, waiting to burst and dye everything the same shade. “Maybe,” he says. “I don’t really know.” He blows at a fly that buzzes around his face. “It doesn’t really feel much like home here.”

“Suppose it might not.” He eyes Jeonghan a moment longer before extending his arm and tapping his fingernails on the bottle. “Can I?”

“Oh.” Jeonghan hands it over and sinks back into the seat. “Sure.”

It opens with the soft pop of the cork dislodging, and Minghao pours it into their glasses. Wine is one of Jeonghan’s preferred drinks, but he hasn’t had one that tasted quite like this. Something about the flavor is so different that he wonders if he should even say it’s wine at all. He watches Minghao take a long sip and gulps, throat dry. “This wine is…”

“Do you like it?” Minghao asks. He waits a few seconds before adding, “You can be honest.”

“It’s… interesting.” He tries to look Minghao’s way, but the sun cuts his eyes. “Where did you get it?”

“I made it,” Minghao says, pointing toward an edge of the land that’s lit up too bright to see, “with grapes from the little grove back there.” He takes another careful sip. “It hasn’t been down there long, but I wanted to try it.” Breath fogs the rim of his glass. “The other batches should come out a little better.”

Jeonghan opens his mouth, but he can’t think of much to say. He’d expected, just maybe, that Minghao had made the wine himself—the lack of label, the haphazard seal. There are a lot of questions he can think to ask, but none of them will come out. The flavor of it is changing on his tongue, and he’s trying so desperately to catch every minute shift before it disappears completely. He swallows nothing and feels it burn in his throat.

“Is that what you want to do?”

“What?”

“Make wine.”

“Nothing like you’re thinking,” Minghao says. “I just wanted to try making it, since I like wine.” He stretches one arm over the back of the bench, fingertips brushing against Jeonghan’s shoulder. “And we have the grapes and the cellar and all the time in the world.” He laughs a little. “Well, I have all the time in the world, at least.” Crickets under the porch start to sing, bittersweet and mellow. “Suppose you’ll be having to head back soon.”

“Yeah.” Jeonghan exhales until he can’t taste the wine anymore and takes another sip. In his periphery, he spots the food and thinks about how it must be getting cold, but he can’t bring himself to reach for it. “Once everything’s finished up.” Even talking about it feels so strange and distant, like it’ll never happen. Already, he can’t picture himself there, stepping back into his apartment and locking the door behind. He’s lost track of how long he’s been away, though surely his boss hasn’t. “Shouldn’t be too much longer now.”

“Looking forward to going back?”

“I am,” Jeonghan answers before thinking about it. He wonders if maybe he should’ve taken a little more time to think, but he figures he’s already taken plenty of time. The way Minghao looks at him makes his skin boil.

“You still hate it here?”

“I don’t know.” Jeonghan doesn’t. He thinks about Sunflower’s soft eyes looking up at him and he isn’t sure. A hot wind dusts over his cheeks. “You sure like asking me about that.”

“Do I?” Minghao’s voice sounds far. “My bad. Hadn’t realized I asked already.”

Maybe he didn’t. Jeonghan is having a tough time remembering right now, with the light hitting him in the eyes. He turns toward Minghao to get away from it, but there’s that look again, same as always. Minghao is unblinking, never turns away. It’s cool outside by now, but Jeonghan feels a heat wave coming on. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, but his expression doesn’t change at all, the very slightest curve of a smile on his lips.

“Like you’re waiting for me to slip up or something.” Jeonghan downs another gulp of wine and squeezes his eyes shut. “It bugs me.”

“Apologies for that,” Minghao says, tone light. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“Nothing in particular.” Minghao inches a little closer, gaze unmoving. “Just want to make sure I don’t miss anything, is all.”

“Miss anything?” Jeonghan scoffs. “Like what?”

“Like anything.” His arm wraps warm around Jeonghan’s shoulders, and the final dying strands of sunlight stretching through to them paint him all sorts of colors. “I just like to look at you.”

Words clam up and clog halfway through Jeonghan’s neck when he tries to get them out. There’s a sunlit earnestness in Minghao’s eyes that burns in a way he hasn’t seen in a long time, since before he can remember. Minghao’s calloused hand drops to his shoulder, and it’s warm as always, feels like the earth itself reaching up to hold him steady, right in this spot of the world. “What are you talking about?” Jeonghan whispers, and Minghao is closer than ever before. It’s almost completely dark now, but everything is so painfully bright.

“You know, don’t you?”

Kissing Minghao feels strangely like lying in a field of grass. Minghao’s hand cups Jeonghan’s cheek, and he feels green all around him, buds sprouting out of the soil and curling into his hair. There is a sapling growing from the center of his chest, keeping him locked in place. All he can do is put his hands on Minghao’s shoulders and close his eyes and feel the life crawling all around him.

In the last fleeting moments of sunlight, he spots the wine bottle behind Minghao. It sits resolute on the small table, holding onto the final shreds of yellow glow, and when Jeonghan sees the bottle this time, he notices it’s not smooth at all. Fingerprints mark it from top to bottom, small grooves catching the light in a way they couldn’t before. His own fingerprints mixed with Minghao’s, mixed with the dust he couldn’t manage to brush away, mixed with the weight of the air and the color of the wine. From this angle, it hardly looks like a bottle at all. Rather, it looks like the trunk of a tree, stretching boldly into the sky.

Jeonghan blinks once more and it is dark, but he can still see the line of every fingerprint on the bottle, burned into the back of his eyelids like a sunspot.

“You’re still there?” His sister’s voice comes scratchy through the phone speakers. “How is it taking so long?”

“There’s a lot to fix.” Sweat rolls down of Jeonghan’s forehead. There’s no service in the house, so he has to take the call outside, standing in the shadow on the side of the house with his back pressed up against the siding. The shade could only help in his wildest dreams. “Should be done soon. They finished up the barn today.”

“Is it okay for you to miss this much work?”

Jeonghan’s thought it enough times himself, but hearing her say it is annoying. Like all she can associate with him is work. Like that’s all he does. Thinking about it, maybe it has been all he’s done for a long time now. “Home” and “work” and “the city” are all the same place. It still bugs him to hear her say that.

“Work’s not the only thing that matters,” he says. “Besides, I’ve cleared it with my boss.” Loosely true. His boss’ emails and voicemail messages have only been getting more impatient. “It’s fine.”

“You sound weird.” That’s also annoying to hear. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, so you care now?” he scoffs. “If you really cared so much, you could’ve just come instead of me.”

“Fine,” she says, “I don’t care, then. I hope you’re stuck there for the rest of your life. I hope Minghao is an asshole to you every day.”

“Minghao is—”

In the middle of saying it, he chokes on nothing. His mind flashes back to last night and the feel of Minghao’s lips, and something in his head short circuits. He made sure to stay in bed late today even though he was awake, couldn’t possibly be sleeping. He’s been forcing himself not to think about it, and now he’s the one who’s dredged it back up. Really, his sister did. She can’t do anything right today.

“What?” she asks. “Is he actually being an asshole?”

“No.” Jeonghan tries to clear his throat without making any noise, but it just feels like dying. “He’s very nice.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“What do you mean, what does it mean?”

“You just sound,” she says, “nothing like yourself.” The static coming through the line is wearing at Jeonghan’s ears. He doesn’t want to talk about this. “Listen, if you—”

“I gotta go,” Jeonghan says. “The contractor’s calling me.”

“Bullshit he is,” his sister says. “What are you trying to avoid?”

Jeonghan swipes to end the call and silences the ringer before shoving the phone in his pocket and closing his eyes. It’s barely past noon, and he’s already getting a headache. And it’s still so unbearably hot. He holds the brim of his hat and squints through the sunshine. In the distance, he can make out a few figures: several bustling around the barn, one weaving through the fields. He heads to the barn.

“There you are,” Seungcheol calls when he walks in, tucking the clipboard in his hand under one muscular arm. “I was just about to look for you.” Looking at his arm only reminds Jeonghan of how much more slender Minghao’s are, so he stops. “Looks like we’re about done with the repairs here, so I’d like you to inspect them after we wrap up.”

“That was quick,” Jeonghan says. He isn’t sure whether or not he sounds disappointed, less sure whether or not he feels so.

Seungcheol beams. “We do quick work.” A bashful laugh escapes him, and he rubs the side of his head. “Well, quick as we can, anyhow.” Behind him, there’s a cacophony of hammers. Jeonghan’s head is pounding. “We’ll be done in just a second, so if you’ll hold on a little while longer.”

“Take your time,” Jeonghan says. It sounds like it comes from the other side of the barn walls. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Within the next half hour, the repairs are finished, and Jeonghan stands idle while the bundle of repairmen haul their tools outside and begin packing up. Seungcheol tells him that all they have left now is the coop, and then everything will be taken care of. “Shouldn’t take more than three days,” he says. Jeonghan thanks him, then watches their backs get tinier and tinier as they march toward the house. Around him, the barn yawns.

It’s nicer than before, albeit less bright. Makes sense, Jeonghan thinks, considering the roof isn’t sporting any gaping holes anymore, but the darkness does make it seem a little sadder. It might be nice if the animals were back already, milling about and murmuring their soft speech. He can picture Sunflower and that little calf nuzzling into her side, and it seems a little less dim. Footsteps sound behind him, too close.

“Looks like new,” Minghao says, warm. He stands a little off-kilter, head tilted to the side and eyes up on the roof, shining. The hat on his head looks ready to fall off. “They’ll love it in here.”

“All they’ve got left now is the coop,” Jeonghan says. He works hard not to meet Minghao’s gaze, stares at the light eking barely through the spaces left between the boards. Minghao takes a few steps closer.

“And you’ll be gone after that, I figure?”

“Yep.”

They stand a few feet away from each other, sweltering in the stuffy heat within the walls, and Jeonghan finds himself wishing a wind would come through and knock all the walls back down. He wishes it would tear the roof of completely and carry him off on a wave of cool, dry the sweat at the back of his neck and drop him right back off at the base of the drive. It would be a shame to see all that work go to waste, but he wishes that wind would come, that anything at all would cut through the air in the barn right now so he doesn’t have to. A droplet of sweat trickling down behind his ear runs suddenly to the base of his neck, and he finally meets Minghao’s eyes, already locked dead on him. Always with that look.

“Care to help me bring the animals over?” he asks. “If you’re not too busy.” Jeonghan wets his lips and tries to think of a way to say no. Minghao must see it. “I’m sure Sunflower would love it if you did.”

Guiding the cows back across the pasture is less difficult than Jeonghan expects, but maybe it’s because Minghao is leading three of them, and Jeonghan only has to take care of Sunflower and her baby. Mostly, they take their time strolling, walking a straight path from the shed to the barn, and the cows don’t fall too much out of line more than a time for two. Minghao is always the one whistling at them and pressing forward. All Jeonghan really feels like he does is watch the calf wobble back and forth through the grass, snaking between near and far from its mother’s side.

“What’s its name?” Jeonghan asks. Minghao hums to say he heard. “The baby.”

“Doesn’t have one yet.”

“What?” Jeonghan cries. “How old is it?”

“Five weeks.”

“And it doesn’t have a name yet?”

“Haven’t thought of a good one.” Minghao’s smile is audible. “You can name her, if you want.”

Ahead of them, the barn comes into clearer focus. Jeonghan is struck by how different it looks now, proud and square against the rigid blue of the sky, a pair of small birds hopping around on its roof. The ground beneath his feet feels like it’s crumbling away, and suddenly, there’s a weight on Jeonghan’s shoulders that he can hardly lift. He watches the birds on the roof, a bee floating by just above the grass, the backs of the cattle moving as they walk. Though he keeps taking steps forward, he feels like he’s stopped moving completely. Every blade of grass bends around him, and he is left still, feeling every atom around him in motion.

“Why would I—”

“I can tell that you love her,” Minghao says. Jeonghan flinches.

“But I can’t think of a good name either,” he says.

“Take your time.” Minghao blows out a whistle to get the cows’ attention again and throws a look over his shoulder at Jeonghan. “You don’t have to have one right now.”

“You should just come up with one, then.”

“I’d like you to do it.” The sun framing Minghao’s silhouette is dazzling. Jeonghan’s head might split in two. “Leave a little piece of you here after you’re gone.”

“Why would you want that?”

Just a few yards shy of the barn, Minghao stops and turns around to look at Jeonghan full-on. His eyes are still rife with that curious intensity, but there’s also something soft in them now, something like a moonlit lake moments from being rippled to oblivion by a single frog’s leap.

“You know,” he says, “don’t you?”

Jeonghan gulps. “I don’t.” He watches the ripples spread out forever, carry up into the clouds in the sky. Minghao’s mouth curls into a tiny smile.

“You do,” he says. “I’m sure you do.” Then he turns around and keeps walking until he disappears into the barn. When Sunflower starts meandering closer to the doors, Jeonghan follows behind.

Two days later, Jeonghan is helping Minghao again, and he doesn’t know why. He wakes up early and wanders into the kitchen, doesn’t say much at all, then finds himself in step beside Minghao, walking out into the blue before-dawn morning. There’s a familiar throb at the back of his skull all day, a dull weariness creeping through his muscles, but he can’t figure out what to do about it. Maybe it never would’ve happened if he hadn’t come outside, but there’s something refreshing about the smell of grass that almost justifies it.

Every now and then, Minghao throws him a glance, something like a question, but Jeonghan keeps his lips tight and continues working. Anything could come out of his mouth if he opens it. Now is no time for anything. By Seungcheol’s estimate, he’ll be leaving to go back to the city the day after tomorrow, and the thought alone throws the balance out from under him. How long has it been already? The image of the city skyline is so unclear. All he sees is the outline of the barn in front of the sun, the shadow of the house falling on the grass. The only color he knows anymore is green.

As they exit the barn in the early afternoon, Jeonghan finds himself trying to recall the pattern on the carpet in his living room. Was it honeycomb or chevron? While he’s busy thinking about it, he misses Minghao stopping with the wheelbarrow and front of him and runs into his back. With the jolt, the pressure building up in his skull forces itself out, explodes off the tip of his tongue.

“Willow,” he says.

Minghao looks at him from under the shade of his hat. “Pardon?” He never stops looking too bright in spite of it.

“The baby,” Jeonghan says. “You should name her Willow.”

For a while, Minghao watches him, tones of sunlight catching along his irises. Rather than looking for something, there’s a flash in his eyes like he’s finally spotted it. “That’s a sweet name,” he says. “I knew you would come up with something good.”

Jeonghan scratches the back of his neck. “I didn’t really… it’s just another plant.”

Minghao’s eyes crinkle. “It’s wonderful,” he says. Birds sing right through the long pause he takes next. “How do you feel?”

“How do I feel?” Sweat clings to Jeonghan everywhere, clams up his palms. “About what?”

“About you,” Minghao says. “About here.”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“I think you’re a lot different now from when you came.”

It’s difficult to meet Minghao’s gaze when he’s looking so earnest, but just when Jeonghan is about to give up on it, Minghao catches him by the chin. The material of his glove is coarse in a soothing way, like the back of a cool rag on his forehead when he had a fever as a child. Eternities of space twinkle along the air between them before Minghao leans in to get him by the mouth this time, burns just as vividly as it had before. There isn’t enough air reaching Jeonghan’s lips when Minghao eases off them.

“What are you doing?” he breathes.

“You can’t tell?” Minghao’s thumbs strokes along Jeonghan’s jaw.

“I mean, why?” He struggles to raise a hand, lets it drop again before doing anything with it. “Why do you keep kissing me?”

“You know why, don’t you?” Minghao’s words cloud up the air somehow, and Jeonghan is dizzy. “Not too many reasons it could be.” Jeonghan opens and closes his mouth a few times uselessly. Behind Minghao, a fly meanders by. “Figure you’d say so if you wanted me to quit.”

In the moment, Jeonghan feels tiny. He feels his mind out of his body, watching from space at the dot of him there in the field, so impossibly close to the dot of Minghao just in front, and he can see everything in the world. Every green field and every dilapidated barn, every street from every countryside ranch to every city grid, every stone of gravel, every rising stalk of corn. Even in the middle of this one farm, he is positively miniscule, but Minghao is looking right at him unflinching, looking at him like he is the last minute detail tying everything together.

“I’m real fond of your company,” Minghao tells him, “and I think things are better here because of you.”

“Just because I called the contractors.”

“That’s not all.” Minghao leans back to let a few inches between them, and Jeonghan’s lungs are soaked in blue. “Even if you hadn’t, there’s something different.” His hand drifts down to Jeonghan’s neck on lava. “You brought something with you, I think.”

“Something,” Jeonghan echoes. Minghao’s eyes crinkle.

“Yeah,” he says, “something.” He releases Jeonghan and smiles at him. The light in his eyes is painfully magnetic. “Sure enough, you’re different now from when you came.” He turns to keep pushing the wheelbarrow, and Jeonghan trails behind him.

“Different how?”

“Just different.”

“In a good way?” Jeonghan is surprised by the fragility of his own voice when he asks it. He’s even more surprised by the way Minghao laughs a little before answering.

“Of course,” he says, tossing a glance over his shoulder. “I think it’s nice to change. Don’t you?” He pauses a moment to breathe while they cross back through the fields. The sinking sun splashes gold on the corners of everything. “I told you I think what makes this place beautiful is how it’s always changing.”

“You did say that.” Jeonghan takes a breath, and it feels more whole than he knows how to process. Strangely, he feels like he might cry.

“And I think you’re beautiful,” Minghao says.

Jeonghan chokes in the middle of his throat. “Don’t.”

“I already said it,” Minghao says. His voice drips off everything, loud even though he doesn’t look toward Jeonghan. “And I figure I won’t have another chance.” A thin laugh ghosts out on his breath, and it shakes in the still air. “So I’ll just ask you to put up with it.”

They plod along in silence the rest of the way, stop and tend to the rows of corn before heading to check on the hens again. Jeonghan loses track of his thoughts as they go, and everything melts away until there is nothing in his head but the land and the farm and the animals, nothing but the sky and the barn and Sunflower, her sweet baby Willow, their sad eyes glittering up at him under long lashes. When he comes to his senses again, they’re taking the final few steps toward the rear door of the house, and the setting sun is fading behind them, everything awash in murky blue.

His skin is cool in the night air, but he feels burning all over when he tugs his shoes off and retreats inside. Behind him, Minghao shucks his boots, still halfway outside the door. Jeonghan watches him unlace them with a fever creeping up around his ears and down his neck. The sound of crickets chirping like a chorus outside has never been so familiar or lovely. Minghao looks up at him suddenly and takes his final step inside. The screen door swings gently shut at his back.

“I’d like to ask something,” he says.

“What is it?”

“Do you still hate it here?”

Jeonghan’s chest freezes up. He wishes his heart would beat the way he knows it should, but it boomerangs between double step and seizing completely. “This again,” he says. Minghao’s smile in return swims with questions.

“You’ll never have to answer it again,” Minghao tells him. His voice sounds hollow, and it makes Jeonghan’s chest feel the same.

“I think…” He inhales and exhales a few times, giving the taste of the air a chance to fill his lungs. “I don’t hate it as much as I thought. Anymore.”

A grin like daybreak spreads over Minghao’s features, and Jeonghan finds himself squinting to look at him. The sound of Minghao walking across the hardwood to stand just before him could be the heartbeat of the earth, the footsteps of time on the green of the land. He hovers there, impossibly close and bright, and he looks into Jeonghan’s eyes with that familiar look. This time, for the first time he can recall, Jeonghan sees his eyes in Minghao’s and feels like he’s looking back the same way.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Minghao says, nearly a murmur. He holds Jeonghan’s gaze a second longer, and Jeonghan feels a flurry of sparklers popping just under his skin. If only Minghao would put them out. Instead, he turns and heads into the kitchen on even footsteps, as if nothing is happening at all. “Now let’s see about dinner.”

A knock at the side of Jeonghan’s cubicle startles him alert. “Wake up,” a voice says. “You’ve been gone too long to be slacking off.” He recognizes the voice, but he can’t really place it. It’s either his boss or the guy in the next cube over, and both of their names escape him right now. He takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders back to his computer.

“Alright.” None of the numbers on the screen look like they mean anything. He’s halfway to a breakthrough when a chill runs through him, and he shivers. It’s too cold in this office.

When he left to come back here three weeks ago, he hadn’t realized how strangely off things would seem once he got back. This chair never gave him trouble before, but now his back always hurts, arms too stiff from sitting so close to still on the desk. All the air in the office is stale, and all the streets look the same. Even when he’s in his own apartment sometimes, he can’t picture the details of it. It’s still warm outside in the early beginnings of fall, but he can’t help feeling like everything’s covered in a sheet of black ice.

“I don’t think it’s me you need to be talking to,” his sister says, piercing through the receiver. The service here is so much better than he thought. It sounds like she’s in the room with him.

“Who should I be talking to, then?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Somebody else.”

“Very helpful.”

“You just sound different.”

Jeonghan’s eye catches on a hairline water stain creeping across the ceiling, and he concentrates his gaze on trailing it. It stretches all the way from the corner of the kitchen to the center of the living room, a single thin snake lying in wait just above the popcorn, and he wonders how long it’s been there. Surely a while, looking at the length, but he’s sure he’s never seen it before. Maybe it appeared while he was away all that time, a steady onward creep just waiting for him to come back and notice. There must be a leak somewhere in the pipes, he guesses. Maybe he should move.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says. His eyes stay on the water stain, but he can’t tell whether it’s growing.

“I think you do,” she tells him. “I feel like you have to.” There’s a pause, and he can almost hear her thinking on the other end. “I know I’m not the only one who’s saying so.”

Jeonghan exhales. “My boss said I seem unfocused.”

“Are you?”

He waits a long time before answering. When he does, it comes out as a grumbled, “Yes.” The weight of the phone in his hand is starting to make his wrist hurt.

“Thought so,” his sister says, voice void of any sympathy. Jeonghan isn’t even sure what kind of sympathy he wants from her, but he still feels hollow. “Well, I can’t help you. I don’t even know what’s wrong. You have to take care of it.”

“Gee, thanks a lot.”

“Go take a walk,” she says. “Maybe you’ll figure it out.” She leaves a pause for Jeonghan to respond, but his gears aren’t turning quick enough to fill it, so she sighs instead. “I’m gonna go. Let me know when you’re back to normal.”

Jeonghan slides the phone into his pocket and stands to go put his shoes on. A walk isn’t such a bad suggestion. He feels like he’s been so sickeningly still ever since he’s been home, and a nice walk might do him the good he needs. The air brushes his cheeks when he steps outside, and it already feels better.

He walks without thinking much about where he wants to go, just following the lay of the paths. The sidewalks turn at regular intervals, streetlights blink in unison, and Jeonghan is confident he could take this walk with his eyes closed and experience it the exact same way. It’s a sweaty evening, cooler than the countryside but still a little too sticky for comfort, and he weaves through thick crowds of pedestrians on his way, trying to touch as few of them as possible.

There are a lot of beautiful things about the city, he thinks. In fact, he’s always thought so. He likes the buzz of the crowd, the smell coming from the street vendors. The rush of it all was what made him want to live here, that feeling of melting into the crowd after a long day and being just another set of footsteps beating against the concrete. As he walks now, though, he can’t help but feel that the crowds aren’t moving, locked in perfect stillness like an oil painting of what they’re supposed to be, busy noise hushed almost to nothing all around him.

In the middle of the city, there’s a small square park, and he makes his way there after a long while meandering. He sits on an empty bench, feels the metal seat singe its way into the backs of his legs, and looks up to the sky. Only the most trace amounts of breeze reach anything here, in the middle of a fence of skyscrapers, just barely enough to tickle his chin. By the color in the sky, he can tell the sun has started to set, but no matter how he angles his head, he can’t find the sun itself. He sits on the bench while it dips lower and lower, until nearly everything is awash in evening blue. As he turns to get up, he spies the last few rays of gold trickling in to light up the bench beside him.

There are small smudges on it, the remnants of what might have been fingerprints long ago. Most of them are wiped almost to nothing by streaky smooth patches, likely the work of trousers lifting off the seat. He is amazed by how untouched it looks, by how rigid it remains under him despite the countless others who’ve sat in this very spot. Just before he starts feeling small, he looks toward the nearest light post in time to see it light up, and the light from it hangs on the shadows of a nearby willow tree. In front of him, he sees everything reflected in a small and shining pair of eyes, and he stands to start the walk back to his apartment.

Just the same as always, it’s too hot. Jeonghan heaves his things up the gravel driveway in a shower of sweat and muttered curses. Inside, it’s barely cooler by enough to call cool at all, but he drags everything in and flops on the sofa to breathe. The scent of this place is something he could never put his finger on, a mixture of wood and dirt and something else he couldn’t possibly hope to name without help. Back on the couch, he closes his eyes and breathes in, feels every cubic inch of his lungs fill with it.

“Oh?”

His eyes flutter open, and he sits up. At the back door, same as always, stands Minghao, halfway inside with that wide-brimmed hat resting gentle on his head. The sunlight frames him, and Jeonghan can feel the heat crawling in along his arms from here. Outside, every cicada is singing, and it’s deafening. Minghao grins like he’s just remembered a secret he forgot he was in on.

“Afternoon,” Jeonghan says.

“Afternoon,” Minghao parrots, verging on a laugh. “Wasn’t expecting to find you here again.”

“Neither was I.” The floorboards sing while Minghao walks a little closer; it complements the creak of the door coming shut behind him. “How’s work?”

“Not bad,” he says. Every step is a small thunderclap, and Jeonghan thinks he is about to start raining. “Hot as ever.”

“I’m sure.”

When Minghao has nearly reached Jeonghan, he takes his hat off. A sheen of sweat glows on his forehead, and the stray hairs there stick close, but he smiles through it all. There’s a light floating around the edges of his eyes, and Jeonghan can’t bring himself to look away from it. “Willow’s grown since you last saw her,” he says, squatting to meet Jeonghan at eye level.

“I’d love to see for myself.”

Minghao’s eyes crinkle, and he lays a hand on Jeonghan’s shoulder, near enough to his cheek to touch it. Everything is a million degrees. “Then let’s go.”

Just as Minghao said, she has grown a little bigger. There’s something more lively about her, too, and she isn’t sticking as closely to Sunflower’s side as before. Both of them moo when Jeonghan walks in, wander up to his side and look him over while he pats their heads. It feels like he was here the whole time, like he never went back home—or to the city, maybe. He’s not sure what to call where anymore.

“I could tell they missed you,” Minghao says behind him. A long shadow stretches over him and through to the other side of the barn, right over the backs of the cows. “Seemed lonely.”

“I missed them, too,” Jeonghan says. He tickles Willow under the chin and watches her eyes shut slowly. “Thought about getting a pet.”

“Why didn’t you?” Minghao edges into Jeonghan’s periphery, head tilted to the side, and Jeonghan can tell without looking too hard that he’s staring his favorite way. His hands seem ready to catch Jeonghan if he tries to disappear.

“I decided that wasn’t what I really wanted.” Jeonghan straightens and tucks his hands into his pockets, turns to face Minghao head-on.

For a while, they only stand there, looking at each other. Minghao looks exactly like he had the first time Jeonghan saw him, lithe and lean and made of gold. The barest hint of a smile glimmers on him. It’s hot in the barn, but it isn’t unbearable, and there’s something pleasant about the smell of the grass coming in through the thin gaps in the wood siding. Patchy sunlight dapples the interior, everywhere around Minghao’s shoulders. He shines through the halo.

“Suppose I’ll go finish up in the fields now,” Minghao says, fingers toying with the brim of his hat. “Care to come with me?”

“I’ll go,” Jeonghan says, already walking.

Though the afternoon is still in full swing, the sun has sunk to that place where shadows become hauntingly long, trailing uneven through the grass behind the pair of them as they walk. The fences, too, cast spidery shade all around them. Jeonghan feels the grass tickle at his ankles, neck slick under the early evening swelter. Ahead of him, Minghao strolls a little more leisurely than usual. Slowly, he slinks back to match pace with Jeonghan, hands deep in the pockets of his overalls.

“I wasn’t expecting you to come back again,” he says, soft under the lilt of the air. “Ever.” Jeonghan hardly hears him over the cicadas.

“You and me both.” He laughs a little bit without meaning to. Maybe something about this is funny, he guesses. Minghao breathes out a tiny half-laugh.

“Mind if I ask why you did?”

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan says. “I just went back home—to the city—and I didn’t want to be there.” He exhales, careful not to stir up too much wind. “Everything felt… I don’t know.”

“How does it feel here?”

“Better.”

They walk a bit longer without talking. Jeonghan wants to stop for a moment, reach out to Minghao, but he decides not to. Ahead of them, rows and rows of growing corn spill over the land. By his guess, it should be ready to harvest soon. A few of the stalks sway, barely enough to be seen, and Jeonghan wants to sprint into the midst of them and get lost.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Minghao tells him. He sounds paper thin, like he might evaporate. “Truthfully, I was hoping a little.” He glances Jeonghan’s way, and his face is pink completely. Jeonghan feels himself getting there. “That you might come back.”

“Just a little?” In spite of himself, Jeonghan coughs. Minghao grins back at him.

“Didn’t want to get my hopes up too high,” he says, “just in case.”

At the edge of the field, they slow to a halt. Leaves of the cornstalks bend toward their knees like the beckoning palms of old friends. Jeonghan doesn’t look at them. He looks at Minghao, whose eyes are already fixed on Jeonghan’s, searching infinitely further for something Jeonghan may never be able to put a name on. Minghao shuffles closer, until the toes of his boots butt up against Jeonghan’s shoes, sunshine clinging around him.

“How long are you staying?” he asks.

“As long as I need to.”

“Until what?”

“Until I hate it here again.”

Minghao’s eyes twinkle. “So you don’t hate it.”

“I told you I didn’t.” The heat is suffocating, but he wouldn’t run out of it even if his legs could carry him. Minghao’s hand is at his wrist, looping softly around.

“Pardon my saying so,” he says, “but I hope you never hate it again.”

A lump gathers in Jeonghan’s throat that will take him eternity to swallow. “So do I,” he manages, voice so incredibly small. Minghao shuffles closer, impossibly, bronze glittering on every inch of his face. His smile burns like nothing Jeonghan has ever felt, like the record high of every summer rolled into a single white-hot point.

“Hope you won’t mind me getting my hopes up a little higher, then.”

Jeonghan opens his mouth to begin saying something, but before he can muster any words, he grabs Minghao by the shoulders and kisses him instead. The insides of his eyelids flash fluorescent with every glaring green and blue, face flush with the feel of the water in the creek. He holds Minghao under his palms and feels the world turning between them, the grass growing longer, the morning sunrise dusting over the roof of the barn. Minghao’s hand at his cheek is coarse and soft in one, so fleetingly tender it feels like he imagines death might. The weight of gravity pools red under his skin, dyes him cherry all over.

“Fine by me if you do,” he whispers, and Minghao pulls him right back by the lips. He tastes like a grin.

It’s funny that the smell of grass seems so refreshing to him now, funny that the heat became bearable without ever cooling down. In so many ways, this place is exactly the same as it has always been, but Jeonghan can’t look at it anymore without seeing how completely it has changed. Even now, it’s still changing, forever twisting itself into new shapes out of old material, fueled by time and the sun and willpower alone. Maybe it’s more beautiful than he thought. Minghao would probably say so.

Jeonghan opens his eyes up to the sky and breathes in. Clouds float by far above their heads, and he watches the sky change, blue fading into the first hints of gold. There’s something to be said about the beauty of changing, though he can’t quite figure out how to say it. For now, he supposes it’s fine to learn to love watching it happen.

**Author's Note:**

> yeehaw gang what's up. it took me literally like 2 months to write this and i don't even know why because it's SO bad but whatever it's finally done!! inspired by dangdanggamche where they went to the farm. i wanted minghao as the sweet farmhand who teaches jeonghan how to love. also i usually write jeonghan coming onto minghao so i thought it was a refreshing change to have minghao being the forward one for once. if you made it this far, i hope you've enjoyed reading!! i appreciate it a whole bunch. i'll do my best to crank out a little more jeonghao before the year is out. see yall!!!


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